This page is intended to be a supplement to the Getting Started guide, with more details about particular generations of machine, decks, and “gotchas” - for someone new to the MD format, please check the Getting Started guide first.
MiniDisc is a recordable format, and most (but not all!) equipment sold outside of Japan was capable of recording to discs. In Japan (the largest market for MD) players were very common as they were cheaper and smaller than recorders. Both the model numbers and the respective wiki pages will show if a device is a recorder or just a player.
Sony created the MD format and were by far the largest manufacturer of devices, from the very first MZ-1 to the ultimate MZ-RH1.
Equipment from other manufacturers play the same discs often use the same batteries, but have different remotes from Sony. The largest other manufacturers of MD equipment were Sharp, Panasonic, Pioneer, Kenwood, Onkyo, and Aiwa.